General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI'm...speechless. Astounded. Flabbergasted. Thank you, ABC News!
An entire article by a major network about trans teen health care that does a good job of explaining the basics. And not a single quote from transphobes. No mention of their specific position statements No Fox News style, "fair and balanced" reporting that seems to have swept across journalism these past two decades where a crackpot & accepted expert are granted equal weight. Just facts. This actually *feels* like pre-2000 journalism.
"What is gender dysphoria and what does transgender youth care consist of?"
https://abcnews.go.com/US/gender-dysphoria-transgender-youth-care-consist/story?id=97940191
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,611 posts)It's great reading this, since the tone is calm, logical, and without rancor or prejudice.
I didn't have time to watch the video, but the written article is so well done that it doesn't take long at all to read.
I hope many people will read it. It will improve the dialogue.
Kid Berwyn
(14,899 posts)DeathSentence isnt gonna know what hit him.
ananda
(28,859 posts)...
evolves
(5,400 posts)it's the other way around: Disney owns ABC.
And I SO hope you are right about the abhorrent FL governor
obamanut2012
(26,069 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,899 posts)It was controversial, as then-CIA Director Bill Casey was a big player who didnt reveal his role in the business.
Cap Cities/ABC formed a merger of equals with Disney in 1996.
Cattledog
(5,914 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,899 posts)The following brief history of ABC offers a perfect snapshot of everything that has gone wrong with the media. This remarkable story includes ABC's takeover by a conservative parent corporation, the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, the rightward shift of the evening news, the rise of conservative talk radio, and the cozy relationship between a state and a press that are supposed to be separate.
In 1985, ABC was taken over by Capital Cities, a conservative, Roman Catholic media organization with extensive ties to the CIA.
(If you think we're making this up, you should know that the Capital Cities takeover of ABC is one of the most analyzed in history, and the subject of many books by Wall Street experts and scholars. Especially recommended is Networks of Power, by Emmy Award-winner Dennis Mazzocco.) (1)
Capital Cities was born in 1954, and rapidly prospered. Many of its founders had previously worked in the U.S. intelligence community and had a great amount of wealth, social contacts and influence in government. Yet they opted to keep the company's actions out of the public eye -- they did not flaunt their wealth with private planes and lavish offices the way so many successful companies do. Just exactly how well-connected Capital Cities was to the CIA is unknown, but it is clear that the CIA concerned itself with the company at various times. The fact that the CIA has often used private businessmen, journalists and even entire companies as fronts for covert operations is not only well-known by historians, but legendary. (Recall Howard Hughes and Trans-World Airlines...)
One of Capital City's early founders was William Casey, who would later become Ronald Reagan's Director of the CIA. At the time of Casey's nomination, the press expressed surprise that Reagan would hire a businessman whose last-known intelligence experience was limited to OSS operations in World War II. The fact is, however, that Casey had never left intelligence. Throughout the Cold War he kept a foot in both worlds, in private business as well as the CIA. A history of Casey's business dealings reveals that he was an aggressive player who saw nothing wrong with bending the law to further his own conservative agenda. When he became implicated as a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, many Washington insiders considered it a predictable continuation of a very shady career.
Another Capital Cities founder, Lowell Thomas, was a close friend and business contact with Allen Dulles, Eisenhower's CIA Director, and John Dulles, the Secretary of State. Thomas always denied being a spy, but he was frequently seen at events involving intelligence operations. Another founder was Thomas Dewey, whom the CIA had given millions to create other front companies for covert operations.
Capital Cities prospered from the start; its specialty was to buy media organizations that were in trouble. Upon acquisition, it would improve management and eliminate waste until the company started turning a profit. This no-nonsense, no-frills approach, as well as its refusal to become side-tracked with other ventures, made it one of the most successful media conglomerates of the 60s and 70s. Of course, the journalistic slant of its companies was decidedly conservative and anticommunist. To anyone who believes that the government should not control the press, the possibility that the CIA created a media company to dispense conservative and Cold War propaganda should be alarming. Rush Limbaugh himself calls freedom of the press "the sweetest -- and most American -- words you will ever find." (2) Apparently, he is unaware of the history of his own employers.
By the 1980s, Capital Cities had grown powerful enough that it was now poised to hunt truly big game: a major television network. A vulnerable target appeared in the form of ABC, whose poor management in the early 80s was driving both its profits and stocks into oblivion. Back then, ABC's journalistic slant was indeed liberal; its criticism of the Reagan Administration had drawn the wrath of conservatives everywhere, from Wall Street to Washington. This was in marked contrast to the rest of the White House press corps, which was, in Bagdikian's words, "stunningly uncritical" of Reagan. Behind the scenes, Reagan was deregulating the FCC and eliminating anti-monopoly laws for the media, a fact the media appreciated and rewarded. The only exception was ABC. Sam Donaldson's penetrating questions during press conferences were so embarrassing to Reagan that his handlers scheduled the fewest Presidential press conferences in modern history.
CONTINUED...
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-libmedia.htm
markodochartaigh
(1,138 posts)I had virtually no idea about any of it. Thank you.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)It was the 1990's and stuff like that was still deemed important to the FCC & Congress.
But also...are any of the company leaders even around any more? That was a quarter century ago.
Wild blueberry
(6,626 posts)dchill
(38,485 posts)niyad
(113,293 posts)brer cat
(24,562 posts)reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)Ms. Toad
(34,069 posts)It places gender affirmation surgery where it belongs - within the spectrum of medical care - with a higher rate of satisfaction with gender affirming surgery than with that of other surgeries.
nuxvomica
(12,423 posts)We need more of that, comparing "rates of regret" between gender affirmation surgery with less controversial procedures provides the kind of perspective often missing from journalism these days.
Mosby
(16,306 posts)Detransition Among Transgender and Gender-Diverse PeopleAn Increasing and Increasingly Complex Phenomenon
The largest study to look at detransition was the U.S. Transgender Survey from 2015 which was a cross-sectional nonprobability study of 27 715 TGD adults (4). This survey included the question Have you ever de-transitioned? In other words, have you ever gone back to living as your sex assigned at birth, at least for a while? The survey found that 8% of respondents had detransitioned temporarily or permanently at some point and that the majority did so only temporarily. Rates of detransition were higher in transgender women (11%) than transgender men (4%). The most common reasons cited were pressure from a parent (36%), transitioning was too hard (33%), too much harassment or discrimination (31%), and trouble getting a job (29%).
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/107/10/e4261/6604653
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)I just wasn't strong enough yet & too enmeshed or affected by the world I'd been raised in.
In my case (raised in a very conservative Christian family & communities) it would've been so easy to just let repression take over and deny I was trans. Suicide of course was something I'd been taught would result in eternal pain, so it wasn't even something that existed in my worldview. Hence the denial and repression so deep and complete I didn't even know it existed after a while. That is what humans will do to try to find love from those around them.
I tried to live their way. It didn't work.
Years later each time I was miserable again and had to go through the whole unpacking all over again. It's exhausting in every way, but for many of us...we simply have no choice as gender dysphoria *hurts* so deeply. Yet with transition, it becomes resolved. The success rate is amazing that way.
Mosby
(16,306 posts)NullTuples
(6,017 posts)The harm that Republicans are inflicting on young trans & nonbinary (and other LGBTQ) people is why I keep posting about it. It's so easy for most people to forget about them amidst all the other harms the GOP is inflicting on America. I get that. But I'm still going to bring up reminders; I've consoled too many parents-of who have lost their child to societal abuse.
Ms. Toad
(34,069 posts)The vast majority of people who detransition do so because of societal condemnation or economic reality, not because of regret about transitioning in the first part.
The reasons cited for detransitioning, even temporarily:
In other words, the pain of living with societal condemnation and discrimination can be worse than the pain of living in a body that is a mismatch for who they are. The solution for that isn't to make transition harder, it is to stop demonizing it. Same gender marriage is accepted now largely because as marriage became legal in state by state it became much more common for couples to live openly.
That meant that there were fewer and fewer people who were unaware that someone they love was gay. As long as people fear for their safety, for their jobs, for their family and other relationships they will be more reluctant to be honest about who they are - meaning that fewer cis folks will be aware that someone they love is trans. Shame and hiding is not only self-destructive, it also delays the time when trans individuals will be fully embraced as just another form of human variety.
And - the meta-study supports the article's statements about regret: Among those who had surgery, 0.6% of transwomen and 0.3% of transmen regretted it.
The one person I know who detransitioned did so because those around her never recognized her as a woman, from her family, to her job, to strangers on the streat. Her perception is that she was viewed as a freak, and that her mental health suffered more as a result of family, community, and societal condemnation that it was previously suffering from living a lie. So she went back to living a lie. Not because she regretted transitioning, but because societal condemnation of her living as a woman was too much to bear.
Ligyron
(7,632 posts)'Cause a lot of the narrow minded people I'm familiar with would still see them as weird perverts who have just been confirmed as one by ever transitioning in the first place. Or for even considering it. You can never unring that particular bell in their narrow minds and they would just see them as the same perverted weirdos only back in disguise again ready to molest some child in the bathroom no doubt.
Ms. Toad
(34,069 posts)First, there was no regret at having transitioned - and her desire to live in the world as a woman remains the same.
But as a woman who went through puberty in a male body and transitioned in her 50s, her appearance was very masculine (tall, coarse features, large hand) as we many of her movements. No one she encountered ever got her gender right. Surgery to feminize her appearance, electrolysis to remove her beard (and 5-oclock shadow), voice lessons to lighten her voice, etc. were not covered by insurance - and her income was not high enough to pay for it out of pocket. So 24/7 she had to spend energy fighting for recognition, enduring stares, and worse - with no real end in sight. It was exhausting and exacerbated her life long depression.
Her choice, as she perceived it, was between returning to what was a familiar uncomfortable existence vs. a 24/7 battle with everyone.
My acquaintance passes well as a male. Most people she encounters in situations where casual abuse is most likely to occur are strangers who won't ever have encountered her presenting herself as a woman. If you fit reasonably well within the range of what is perceived as male (as my acquaintance does), strangers wouldn't even guess that she had transitioned, and then detransitioned. Families are a mixed bag, but at work most people maintain a facade of politeness. So detransitioning diminished a lot of the blatant abuse (and provided a significant amount of relief, even if it reinforced the bigoted opinions of some).
lambchopp59
(2,809 posts)Fox has been successful at dragging the Overton window rightward far too long. The "what group do we alienate next" game -- exception of white supremacist fuckwads makes me marvel they aren't at critical hemorrhaging levels of viewers.
Maybe it's like a car crash: nauseating but they can't stop looking at it?
Hekate
(90,674 posts)Let them know how much we appreciate it.
ismnotwasm
(41,977 posts)Mosby
(16,306 posts)Gender-nonconforming people deserve compassionate attention in all their complexity. Ignoring detransitioners experience isnt just harmful to them; it also means that doctors and scientists miss out on much-needed data that could improve gender-affirming care for future patients.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/detransition-transgender-nonbinary-gender-affirming-care/672745/
efhmc
(14,725 posts)personal experience. Started to but then realized it was hideous for me to suggest that I knew anything about this subject. I just want all these young people to live long and happy lives. But as usual it does not stop the right wing from making laws about it.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)It's been called a "wolf in sheep's clothing" piece as it first appears to seem so reasonable but turns out to be an anti-trans effort. The publication itself has slowly gained a bad reputation for such pieces ever since promoting transphobe Jesse Singals article, When Children Say Theyre Trans. Occasionally they'll try to do the Fox News-ish "both sides" trick with articles such as, Robyn Kanner's 'I Detransitioned. But Not Because I Wasn't Trans' (paywall), but that's not designed to outweigh the legitimacy they give transphobes, TERFS, conservative Christians and the like. It's a narrow issue on which The Atlantic has taken a real but subtle and harmful editorial stance.
But just so you know: many trans people detransition at some point. Sometimes several times in their lives. But it's nearly always due to reasons such as rejection by society, anti-trans doctors, friends, family, employers and so on. There are those who transition and then decide their new identity -where ever it may lie along multiple spectra - does not fit after all and decide to revert. Unless they at that point decide to attack those who are trans, they too are supported and celebrated within our various communities. The problem is that although that latter group is small in number and percent, a tiny handful of them - perhaps a dozen - have found fame, psychological reward and a very small amount of fortune in attacking the rest of trans humanity and lending their name as "proof" that nobody should be allowed to transition, and certainly not teens. It should also be noted that discrepancies have been noted in some of their stories, especially after they get picked up by religious & political right wing powerhouses. I have no doubt they are sincere, but they also seem to get very caught up in their sudden celebrity.
The parents-of-trans-kids communities I've been a part of over the years are particularly well aware of teens who need time, experimentation and sometimes even mistakes to figure out who they are. They are celebrated and supported through their journey as much as any trans teen, despite discovering they are not trans and despite comprising perhaps 1% of the total. Again, so long as they don't decide that what was a mistake for them must therefore be a mistake for the other 97%-99% of trans teens. Especially since once trans teens do get through a managed puberty the regret rate is low enough to be the envy of any managed medical care specialty. There are just too many hoops to jump through, too many years long wait periods, too many professional health care providers involved and part of their purpose all along the way is to help each kid find the path that is right for them with very specialized care.
Detransition info:
"Study finds 2.5% of transgender kids go through detransition"
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/study-finds-2-5-of-transgender-kids-go-through-detransition/135029/
"New Study Shows Trans Youth Are Extremely Unlikely to Detransition"
https://www.them.us/story/trans-youth-desistance-rare-study-pediatrics
The study cited:
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e2021056082/186992/Gender-Identity-5-Years-After-Social-Transition
"New Study Shows Discrimination, Stigma, And Family Pressure Drive Detransition Among Transgender People"
https://fenwayhealth.org/new-study-shows-discrimination-stigma-and-family-pressure-drive-detransition-among-transgender-people/
"Factors Leading to Detransition Among Transgender and Gender Diverse People in the United States: A Mixed-Methods Analysis"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8213007/
Ms. Toad
(34,069 posts)calimary
(81,238 posts)Ms. Toad
(34,069 posts)Pushing the detransition narrative while right wing is actively seeking to prevent individuals form obtaing gender-affirming care is trans-hostile and supports the right wing movement to erase trans individuals.
Most detransitioning has nothing to do with whether transitioning was appropriate self-care. in fact, it is the opposite - detransitioning is largely a response to societal's condemnation; often choosing the lesser of two evils (denying one's self v living with societal condemnation).
LostOne4Ever
(9,288 posts)But, as you probably know, most people who detransition do so for reasons other than regret.
Sadly, detransitioners and especially those with regret are being weaponized against all trans people. What you went through should be supported, but not used to hurt others.
By fighting the right we can hopefully get to point where people have access to the treatment they need to transition or detransition as they need and neither side gets demonized.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)Last edited Mon Mar 20, 2023, 03:44 AM - Edit history (1)
Specifically, people who decide hormonal / medical transition is not a good fit for them after trying it:
The protocols are perhaps not surprisingly not that different from transition but in the opposite direction. If anything, there is less gatekeeping from what I've heard from people who decided it wasn't right for them or from their parents if they were teens. The same techniques and medical tests are used. The primary difference is that there is an endpoint with a set goal. They use the same well defined parameters to stay within for blood work, etc. so it's just a matter of how soon they can revert back based on each body's responses.
The other thing many people don't realize is that some fair percent of non-binary people try treatments like hormones under the care of an endocrinologist and revert when it doesn't feel right, or they decide the changes don't fit who they need to be. It's not talked about much because for them it's all part of the same journey. The goal is the same though, to be comfortable in their body and person. Really, isn't that what everyone wants in life? Trans & some nonbinary people simply have unique challenges in that respect.
Warpy
(111,255 posts)What's new are better medical treatments and more people who accept the idea.
Christine Jorgensen, who has to be one of the bravest people ever to walk the earth, had her surgery in the early 1950s and came out in 1953. I was just a little kid, but I remember the horror and sensationalism she had to cope with.
Some cultures have always accepted trans people while others have a history of freaking out and expelling or killing them. It's just not a new thing.
murielm99
(30,736 posts)Warpy
(111,255 posts)and went on to a long showbiz career if you knew where to look for her. She was also as tough as they came to have survived all the abuse she got.
albacore
(2,398 posts)I pity the fool who gives Hal any shit!
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)supportive community.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)albacore
(2,398 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)community has been terrific.
LostOne4Ever
(9,288 posts)Gonna share this!
Martin68
(22,794 posts)too bad no one reads newspapers anymore.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)Haggard Celine
(16,844 posts)subscribe to the NYT. I don't read many of their articles, anyway. Can't read them because they're behind the pay wall. The next time they send me an email to ask for me to subscribe, I'm going to write them a letter and tell them why I won't.
Martin68
(22,794 posts)Over the past year, we have seen a sweeping and ferocious attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/opinion/trump-desantis-transgender-rights.html?searchResultPosition=3
Kim Petras, a Transgender Woman, Won the Grammy for Best Pop Duo Performance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/arts/music/kim-petras-grammys-best-pop-duo.html?searchResultPosition=5
The majority of the people who skate with the group identify as queer a rarity in a society that is often openly hostile to the L.G.B.T.Q. community...But despite the marginalization that they face, the members of Dencity, and groups like it, have been able to carve out a space of freedom and safety for themselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/01/style/lagos-nigeria-women.html?searchResultPosition=7
Leading medical groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have rejected claims that gender-affirming care is harmful to transgender children or adults.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/us/utah-transgender-bill.html?searchResultPosition=9
Trans Kids Deserve Private Lives, Too
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/opinion/trans-kids-privacy-gender-identity.html?searchResultPosition=12
Defining Nonbinary Work Wear: How nonbinary professionals thread the needle of getting dressed for the office.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/style/nonbinary-professional-work-attire.html?searchResultPosition=24
I Chose to Compete as My True, Trans Self. I Win Less, but I Live More.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/opinion/trans-athlete-swimming.html?searchResultPosition=25
A Literary Scene Where Parties Are Part of the Agenda: LittlePuss Press specializes in work by transgender writers. Its founders also know its hard to resist a great party.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/style/littlepuss-press-literary-parties.html?searchResultPosition=27
Blue States Want Red States to Face Consequences, but Travel Bans Are Harmful
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/opinion/travel-bans-academic-freedom.html?searchResultPosition=28